e present need than
any of them. That is what we go to the court-house for,--the statement
of the fact, and the elimination of a general fact, the real relation
of all the parties; and it is the certainty with which, indifferently
in any affair that is well handled, the truth stares us in the face,
through all the disguises that are put upon it,--a piece of the
well-known human life,--that makes the interest of a court-room to the
intelligent spectator.

I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the
counsel, and the local importance of the cause, into the court-room.
The prisoner's counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in
the Commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the State from corner to
corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to
silence, but not to submission. When hard-pressed, he revenged
himself, in his turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define
what salvage was. The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said
everything it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and
describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous
sea-officers that are or might be,--like a schoolmaster puzzled by a
hard sum, who reads the context with emphasis. But all this flood not
serving the cuttle-fish to get away in, the horrible shark of the
district-attorney being still there, grimly awaiting with his "The
court must define,"--the poor court pleaded its inferiority. The
superior court must establish the law for this, and it read away
piteously the decisions of the Supreme Court, but read to those who
had no pity. The judge was forced at last to rule something, and the
lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a definition. The parts
were so well cast and discriminated, that it was an interesting game
to watch. The government was well enough represented. It was stupid,
but it had a strong will and possession, and stood on that to the
last. The judge had a task beyond his preparation, yet his position
remained real; he was there to represent a great reality, the justice
of states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and
which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he
was entirely well-meaning.

The statement of the fact, however, sinks before the statement of the
law, which requires immeasurably higher powers, and is a rarest gift,
being in all great masters one and the same thing,--in lawyers,
nothing technic